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Lady Meng Jiang or Meng Jiang Nü (), is a Chinese tale, with many variations. Later versions are set in the Qin dynasty, when Lady Meng Jiang's husband was pressed into service by imperial officials and sent as corvee labor to build the Great Wall of China. Lady Meng Jiang heard nothing after his departure, so she set out to bring him winter clothes. Unfortunately, by the time she reached the Great Wall, her husband had already died. Hearing the bad news, she wept so bitterly that a part of the Great Wall collapsed, revealing his bones. The story is now counted as one of China's Four Great Folktales, the others being the Legend of the White Snake (''Baishezhuan''), Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, and The Cowherd and the Weaving Maid (''Niulang Zhinü''). Chinese folklorists in the early 20th century discovered that the legend existed in many forms and genres and evolved over the last 2,000 years. The section of the Great Wall that was toppled in the legend is in today's Zibo City, Shandong Province. The Temple of Lady Meng Jiang, whose origins are sometimes dated to the Song dynasty, was constructed or reconstructed in 1594, during the Ming dynasty, at the eastern beginning of the Great Wall in Qinhuangdao of Hebei Province. It is still in existence. Originally "Meng" was not her family name. "Meng Jiang" would have been a very common one for women in the state of Qi, as "Jiang" was the surname of the Qi ruler and much of its nobility, and "Meng" meant "eldest child" not born to the main wife. ==Development== The legend developed into many versions with variations in both form and content. The scholar Wilt Idema has selected and published ten versions of the legend, which, in the publisher's words, "emphasize different elements of the story – the circumstances of Meng Jiangnu's marriage, her relationship with her parents-in-law, the journey to the wall, her grief, her defiance of the emperor." 〔(University of Washington Press )〕 Although the later, fully developed forms of the legend take place in the Qin dynasty, the seeds of the tale lie in a simple anecdote in the ''Zuozhuan'', a chronicle of the far earlier Spring and Autumn period. The anecdote says that after a warrior of the state of Qi, Qi Liang (杞梁), was killed in battle, his Lord, Duke Zhuang, met Qi Liang's wife on the road and asked his servant to convey his condolences to her. Qi Liang's wife replied that she could not receive condolences on the road, and Duke Zhuang visited her at home and left only when the proper ceremonies had been completed. In the Han dynasty, the Confucian scholar Liu Xiang expanded this anecdote both in his ''Garden of Stories (Shuoyuan)'' an anthology, and in his ''Biographies of Exemplary Women'' (''Lienü zhuan''), which was meant to show proper behavior for women. In this version the woman, whose family is not mentioned, is still called simply "Qi Liang's Wife" and given no other name. The story explained that "when her husband died, she had no children, nor any relatives, and had no place to return to. She wailed over the corpse of her husband at the foot of the city wall, and the sincerity of her grief was such that none of the passers-by was not moved to tears. Ten days later the wall toppled down."After her husband's burial was properly carried out, she said "Now I have no father, no husband, and no son.... All I can do is die." The woman was not called "Lady Meng" until the Tang dynasty, when the bare exemplary anecdote was expanded with many new details. The years of wars and regional wall-building leading up to the founding of the dynasty, concludes Arthur Waldron's history of the Great Wall, revived memories of the First Emperor and his wall. These fresh memories and the stereotyped themes of suffering in Tang dynasty poetry were combined with the story of Qi Liang's wife to make a new set of stories which were now set in the Qin dynasty. In one version, Qi Liang flees the hardship of labor on the Great Wall in the north and enters the Meng family garden to hide in a tree and sees the young lady bathing. He at first refuses her demand that she be his wife, saying that such a well-born woman cannot marry a conscript, but she replies "A woman's body cannot be seen by more than one man". In another version, they make love before going to see her parents. The other essential character of the fully developed legend, the First Emperor, does not join her until the versions produced in the Song dynasty, when he had become a stock villain. It was not until the Ming dynasty, however, when the Great Wall as we know it was constructed, that the Great Wall is named as the wall in the story and that Lady Meng is said to have committed suicide by throwing herself from it into the ocean (in spite of the fact that there is no place at that point from which she could throw herself). Popular versions only at this point tell the reader that this story happened during the reign of the wicked, unjust Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi, who decided to build a wall to keep the barbarians from invading his kingdom. But the wall kept disintegrating, and the construction made little progress. A clever scholar told the Emperor "Your method of building the wall is making the whole country tremble and will cause many revolts to break out. I have heard of a man called Wan Xiliang. Since the name 'Wan' means 'ten-thousand,' You need only fetch this one man." The Emperor was delighted and sent for Wan, but Wan heard of the danger and ran away. In the form which came to be most common, after suffering pain and exhaustion laboring on the Great Wall, Wan Xiliang died. When winter came, Lady Meng Jiang had heard no news and insisted on taking winter garments to her husband. Over her parents' objections and paying no attention to her own fatigue, she traveled over mountains and rivers to arrive at the Great Wall, only to find that her husband had died. She collapsed in tears. She did not know how to identify her husband's bones, and cried until the wall collapsed and exposed a pile of human bones. She still could not identify her husband's remains, so she pricked her finger and prayed that her blood would penetrate only her husband's bones. When the Emperor heard of Lady Meng, he had her brought before him. Her beauty so struck him that he decided to marry her. She agreed only on three conditions: First, a festival of 49 days should be held in her husband's honor; second, the Emperor and all his officials should be present at the burial; and, third, he should build a terrace 49 feet tall on the bank of the river, where she would make a sacrificial offering to her husband. After these three conditions were met, she would marry the Emperor. Qin Shi Huangdi granted her requests at once. When all was ready she climbed the terrace and began to curse the Emperor and denounce his cruelty and wickedness. When she had finished, she leaped into the river and drowned herself. ==Variations and adaptations== Lady Meng appears in a ballad found among the Dunhuang manuscripts, which has been translated by Arthur Waley. It recounts that when Qi Liang died his body was built into the wall his soul wandered "among the thorns and brambles," but spoke to his wife saying "A poor soldier under the earth will not ever forget you." When his wife heard this, she broke into sobbing but she did not know where in the Long Wall to look for her husband's bones. But the collapse of the wall revealed so many bones that she could not tell which ones were her husband's. Then she bit her finger and drew blood, telling them "If this is my husband, the blood will sink deep into the bones." She asked the other lonely skulls if she could take a message to their families. All the souls of the dead then replied: :Spring and winter for ever we lie amid the yellow sands. :Bring word to our wives that pine desolate in their bowers :Telling them to chant the Summons to the Soul and keep up the sacrifices. A popular song of later times, "Twelve Flower Months of Lady Meng Jiang" (''Meng Jiangnü shi’eryue hua''), expresses sympathy with her: :The first month is the month of plum blossoms :Every family hangs its red lantern :"My neighbor's husband comes home united with his loved ones, :Only my husband is far away building the Great Wall!" In a 19th-century variation, an imperial official has Lady Meng's husband killed, and tries to seduce her when she claims his body. She tricks him by giving him a robe to present to the emperor, who has him executed when it turns out to be black instead of yellow, the imperial color. Lady Meng then presents the emperor with the authentic dragon robe. In another late and elaborate story, Lady Meng floats out to sea on her husband's coffin. When the First Emperor threatens to drain the ocean and burn the palace of the dragon king in order to find her, a surrogate Lady Meng comes to the emperor's bed. In some versions, she is the mother of Xiang Yu, the prince who fights to replace the Qin dynasty and burns the Qin palace. Still another version portrays Lady Meng as a goddess who descends from heaven to follow her husband, who chooses to be reborn on earth in order to take the place of 10,000 men who would have been sacrificed to build the Great Wall. By the 20th century, the legend had been adapted in every type of regional drama and ballad or song, developing variety in the characters, their actions, and in the attitude expected from the audience. In a version written in the women's script of Jiangyong gives many details of Lady Meng's emotions. It recounts her yearning for love and her grief on returning home to sleep each night with her husband's bones. In the 1920s and 1930s the work of Chinese folklorists made the re-worked legend into the premier Chinese folktale. Even in the 19th century there had been an English translation, George Carter Stent's ''Meng Cheng's Journey to the Great Wall''. In 1934 Genevieve Wimsatt and Geoffrey Chen chose another version to translate as ''The Lady of the Long Wall''. Aaron Avshalomov, a Russian émigré composer who came from the United States to Shanghai, used the legend as the basis for his opera, ''The Great Wall'', which was produced in November 1945, making it the first Western-style opera in Chinese. Although it was welcomed by audiences and had political support, the opera has not been performed widely since then. The earliest film of the story was the 1926 film starring the era's most famous actress Hu Die 〔''(Lady Meng Jiang )''〕 A number of films followed, including a 1970 Taiwan feature film. 〔(The Great Wall (Meng Jiang Nu Ku dao Chang Cheng) ) Lee Ming Film Co.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Lady Meng Jiang」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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